If you're like many home gardeners, you may have added fruit trees to your garden in the past two years. Maybe a peach or an apricot, or even a few citrus or dwarf avocado. Maybe you're more into grapes and berries. Perhaps you're more the vegetable type and started growing your own tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and others. Did you know that all of these fruits and vegetables need to be pollinated to produce crops? You can reliably improve pollinations of all your fruits and vegetables by attracting the right insects.

Broccoli is $2.99 a pound, artichokes as much as $5.99 each, snow peas and snap peas are $4.99 per pound, Yukon Gold potatoes are $1.50 a pound. And if you want these vegetables organic and pesticide free, add another 50% to these prices. Building a raised bed and starting an organic vegetable garden might be a timely thing to do in 2009. A new president will be sworn into office Tuesday. He’s even consider- ing digging out part of the White House lawn and replacing it with a garden — an organic Victory Garden.

COSTA MESA — A line of students stretched outside of the cafeteria, waiting to be served tasting-sized portions of 21 fruits and vegetables. Some of the samples were well-known flavors — watermelon and strawberries — while others, like jicama, garbanzo beans, figs and dates, were more unusual to the young tastebuds. The students with the more foreign fruits had to try harder to get their peers to sample their wares, but no student put in more effort than the one hawking zucchini.

"I eat vegetables and fruits, and I know breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You have to eat healthy and only eat a little bit of chips and sweets and candy." SCOTTIE FUENTES, 9 Costa Mesa "I do crunches, butterflies, push-ups, and I walk a lot and bicycle." DANIELLE DICKEY, 9 Costa Mesa "I try not to eat too much sweets, and I do all kinds of sports -- soccer, basketball, jogging and running." JONATHAN MORA, 10 Costa Mesa "I eat five fruits and vegetables or more a day, exercise and play a lot of sports."

Fourth-graders from Andersen Elementary School in Newport Beach on Wednesday rolled up their sleeves and picked cauliflower, onions and radishes to honor Cesar Chavez on his birthday. The purpose of the picking at the Incredible Edible Park in Irvine, which was organized by Volunteer Center Orange County, was to show the fourth-graders the amount of physical labor that goes into putting vegetables on the supper table. And their hard work would help feed the region’s residents with fresh produce.

Michael Miller The California Nutrition Network's A to Z Salad Bar at TeWinkle Middle School didn't quite cover the entire alphabet -- there aren't any known fruits or vegetables that start with U or X, and the organizers decided to pass on Q. "Q was probably quince, but those are little crab apples," said Sharon Moore, grant project nutritionist for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District. "They're not very edible and not in season." Regardless, the salad bar, which extended across the multipurpose room at TeWinkle on Thursday, featured as full a display of produce as middle school students are likely to see. Among the more obscure offerings on the menu were romaine lettuce, garbanzo beans, endive and daikon -- a root vegetable that often graces Japanese cooking.

Deepa Bharath It's all about red, white and blue for Paul Gerst. He's celebrating the spirit of America this year at the 94th annual Christmas Boat Parade. His boat, named Elation, describes its owner's state of mind when he sees the 36-foot sailboat lighted up in patriotic colors, complete with Frosty the Snowman sporting an Uncle Sam hat and perched on a large golden gift box. This is Gerst's fifth year in the parade, and he enjoys it every year with his wife and son. The boat, Gerst said, is decorated entirely by sons Paul Jr. and John Gerst and their longtime buddies, Paul Lindley and Rich Russell.

COSTA MESA — As a dramatic soundtrack played, Killybrooke Elementary School students chopped, stirred and cooked healthy gastronomic masterpieces using the secret ingredient — tomatoes — in hopes of beating out the competition. Team Food Revolution made chili and served it in a hollowed red bell pepper with chili-pepper corn muffins. But it was Team Veggie Monsters that took the top honor by only two points with a whole-grain pasta, marinara sauce and bruschetta for Killybrooke's "Iron Chef"-inspired cooking competition Monday in the school's multipurpose room.

Some would call the consistency of Golden Dragon ordinary, but I prefer to think of it as reassuring. This feeling begins the moment you walk into the restaurant, which has been a fixture on Harbor Boulevard near Victoria Street for more than 30 years. One of the owners, an elegantly dressed petite Asian woman, acts as if you are a long-lost cousin and hugs you. That was a first for me, getting hugged by any employee of a restaurant. It actually was a really great tone to set for our meal.

Elise Gee When Rich Penjoyan began selling peanuts on the side of the road more than 30 years ago, he probably had no idea that he was planting the seeds of a thriving family business. Growers Ranch, a produce store on Newport Boulevard, celebrates its 30th anniversary this month. Besides peanuts, the small, country-style store offers an array of fresh fruits and vegetables -- a combination that has had customers coming back for as long as it's been in existence.

Ruth Jolley likes to call it her "little oasis. " At the base of a hillside terraced with grapevines behind her Corona del Mar house, a rainbow of leafy greens basked in the sun one morning last week. Chard and peppery arugula sprouted from one 4-foot by 8-foot raised garden bed, while a kale selection that would make even the hippest foodie's head spin grew in another. Branches of a squat Satsuma orange tree drooped with fruit. A few yards away, snap pea tendrils crawled up a small trellis and bursts of magenta peeked out from beneath French radish leaves.

Half a dozen visually impaired teenagers and a group of guides listened in silence in the middle of a tight trail at Crystal Cove State Park. Some cupped their ears or turned their heads to hear the different bird calls they were trying to count. "I got 10," said Nick Avalos, 16. He and his classmates from the Braille Institute in Los Angeles were at Moro Canyon in Laguna Beach on Thursday. There they participated in a pilot project of sorts with Crystal Cove Alliance, a nonprofit partner of the state park.

While London prepares to host the summer Olympics, Adams Elementary School students competed in their own version - only no one walked away with a medal Friday. Instead, everyone walked away with ideas for fun physical activities and a taste of new fruits and vegetables. "We want them to feel like a winner because they're doing it," said Newport-Mesa Unified nutritionist Pam Williams with the Network for a Healthy California. "They walk away a winner. " The Costa Mesa school was one of about a half dozen this year to host the Nutrition Olympics put on by the Network for a Healthy California.

COSTA MESA — As a dramatic soundtrack played, Killybrooke Elementary School students chopped, stirred and cooked healthy gastronomic masterpieces using the secret ingredient — tomatoes — in hopes of beating out the competition. Team Food Revolution made chili and served it in a hollowed red bell pepper with chili-pepper corn muffins. But it was Team Veggie Monsters that took the top honor by only two points with a whole-grain pasta, marinara sauce and bruschetta for Killybrooke's "Iron Chef"-inspired cooking competition Monday in the school's multipurpose room.

COSTA MESA — A line of students stretched outside of the cafeteria, waiting to be served tasting-sized portions of 21 fruits and vegetables. Some of the samples were well-known flavors — watermelon and strawberries — while others, like jicama, garbanzo beans, figs and dates, were more unusual to the young tastebuds. The students with the more foreign fruits had to try harder to get their peers to sample their wares, but no student put in more effort than the one hawking zucchini.

May and June is the perfect time to plant heat-loving summer vegetables. Planted too early, they sulk — planted too late, their season is cut short. Some plants just tolerate summer, but these sizzlers actually prefer the heat, bright light and long days of the summer months ahead. Some of these summer specialties are started from transplants, but others are best from seed. It seems that growing plants from seed is almost a lost art in many gardens. However, with only slightly more effort, growing a few vegetables from seed will reward you with many more choices and even better flavor.

If you're like many home gardeners, you may have added fruit trees to your garden in the past two years. Maybe a peach or an apricot, or even a few citrus or dwarf avocado. Maybe you're more into grapes and berries. Perhaps you're more the vegetable type and started growing your own tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and others. Did you know that all of these fruits and vegetables need to be pollinated to produce crops? You can reliably improve pollinations of all your fruits and vegetables by attracting the right insects.

NEWPORT BEACH — True Food Kitchen plans to open a 7,200-square-foot restaurant Aug. 2 at Fashion Island. The restaurant, which will be at 451 Newport Center Drive next to Roy's Hawaiian Fusion Cuisine and Fleming's Prime Steakhouse, is backed by Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Fox Restaurant Concepts and author Dr. Andrew Weil, who pens healthy-living books. The restaurant will seek to encourage health with vegetables, grains and proteins from local sources. There will also be coffee drinks, natural juice blends, teas, sparkling wine cocktails, organic and low-calorie beer and sake and organic wines.

Looking out from his balcony, Ira Botnick pointed toward the green, trimmed slope below. "See?" the Hazel Drive resident said. "It's all cut back and it doesn't look bad, does it?" Botnick is one of hundreds of Corona del Mar residents whose homes border Buck Gully, a bush- and tree-filled ravine leading to the ocean. For defense against fires, homeowners there are required to have space between their homes and the vegetation. Every two years, a city-hired company assesses the fire hazards that plants and brush pose to homes in the gully.

Fourth-graders from Andersen Elementary School in Newport Beach on Wednesday rolled up their sleeves and picked cauliflower, onions and radishes to honor Cesar Chavez on his birthday. The purpose of the picking at the Incredible Edible Park in Irvine, which was organized by Volunteer Center Orange County, was to show the fourth-graders the amount of physical labor that goes into putting vegetables on the supper table. And their hard work would help feed the region’s residents with fresh produce.